The Bryant Street Pier Project would have included a cruise terminal and plenty of shopping along the piers.

Photo: Courtesy: The Jerde Partnership

The Bryant Street Pier Project would have included a cruise...

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Piers 30-32 were once envisioned as becoming the main public area for the America's Cup sailing race. In 2010, the public viewing area was shifted north to Pier 27 and 29. Earlier this year, the plan to include Piers 30-32 in a development deal with race organizers fell through.

Photo: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, LLP

Piers 30-32 were once envisioned as becoming the main public area...

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Warriors team captain David Lee displays that he is indeed wearing his basketball socks, as he joins San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and Golden State Warriors basketball team executives officially announcing plans, on Tuesday May 22, 2012, in San Francisco,Ca., to build a new arena on Piers 30 and 32 in time for the start of the 2017-2018 NBA season.

Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle

Warriors team captain David Lee displays that he is indeed wearing...

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(l to r) Golden State Warriors basketball team owner, Joe Lacob, NBA Commissioner David Stern, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and Warriors executive Peter Guber, as they officially announce plans, on Tuesday May 22, 2012, in San Francisco,Ca., to build a new arena on Piers 30 and 32 in time for the start of the 2017-2018 NBA season.

Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle

(l to r) Golden State Warriors basketball team owner, Joe Lacob,...

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Golden State Warriors basketball team executives, Peter Guber, (right) and Joe Lacob join San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, (center) as they officially announced plans, on Tuesday May 22, 2012, in San Francisco,Ca., to build a new arena on Piers 30 and 32 in time for the start of the 2017-2018 NBA season.

The man who produced such edge-of-your-seat movies as "Batman" and "Midnight Express" cautioned Tuesday that his efforts to build a new Golden State Warriors basketball arena atop San Francisco's Piers 30-32 are in the very earliest stages.

"This is the beginning of the beginning of the beginning," said Peter Guber, co-owner of the Warriors and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment. "We're at the opening credits."

It's yet to be seen whether this particular production will be a feel-good story, as the Warriors and city officials pledge, or a heartbreaker like so many previous efforts to develop the 13-acre patch of crumbling concrete and pilings just south of the Bay Bridge.

Lack of money and frustrations with the politics of San Francisco have sunk at least five previous efforts, some with major players behind them like Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison, who backed out of a plan this year to build on the piers as part of the America's Cup sailing race deal.

Supervisor Sean Elsbernd, known as a pragmatic fiscal hawk, said this time around, the Warriors' owners' intense enthusiasm in the face of the piers' structural problems and the city's politics may prove the difference.

"There's no question the ownership is really walking out on the plank," Elsbernd said. "It's not just a toe in the water. They've jumped in."

Potential condemnation

The Port of San Francisco estimates the piers will be condemned in 10 years if not dramatically overhauled, but that's exactly what the Warriors have in mind to support their new stadium: a $75 million to $100 million repair job on the pilings supporting the piers and a brand new surface on top of it.

An iconic, high-tech arena, retail center, restaurants, parking garage and public park space is estimated to cost an additional $500 million - all to be privately financed except for the handover of the piers and an adjoining lot across the Embarcadero from the city to the team on long-term leases. The combined value of those properties - with Piers 30-32 in usable condition - was about $55 million, according to city officials. But in its current state, the piers have a negative value, they said.

Ellison's loss may prove beneficial to the Warriors because the team now has access to the Oracle co-founder's extensive engineering studies done on Piers 30-32, which were provided to the port, and to thousands of pages of public documents produced last year for the environmental impact review of the America's Cup regatta that include analyses of the piers' physical condition, animal species in the water and traffic issues. Guber and Warriors co-owner Joe Lacob say they're fully aware of the condition of the piers and will soon be putting out a bid to fix them.

A game of politics

Still, the project, whenever it is committed to paper, will have to be approved on its own merits and face the rigor of San Francisco's political process. While the mayor and all 11 members of the Board of Supervisors sent a letter to the team this month urging it to move to San Francisco, community support is far from unanimous.

Aaron Peskin, chairman of the local Democratic Party and a frequent critic of waterfront developments, said he was surprised that all the supervisors voiced support for a plan when they know virtually no details.

"People should wait and see what the financial details of the project are before they start cheerleading and falling victim to a lot of hype before anybody knows any details beyond some pretty watercolors," he said, referring to artist renderings of the new arena.

He acknowledged a new arena would be "a boon to businesses" in the area, but said he has significant concerns about adding to traffic where cars already back up for blocks to get on the Bay Bridge. Adding a major construction project on top of others in the area, including the new Transbay Transit Center, compounds the problem.

"It's a mess right now," Whitaker said. "Over the next five or six years, it's going to be a challenge not to feel trapped in our homes."

David Lewis, executive director of the nonprofit Save the Bay, said, "They just announced that they're going to do this. That is definitely the easiest part."

Winning their approval could be difficult. State law has strict "public trust" requirements for building on the waterfront that prioritizes open space, the maintenance of views of the water and maritime usage. Lewis said a basketball arena doesn't fit any of that and could easily be built farther inland.

Gunnar Lundeberg, president of the Sailors' Union of the Pacific, said Piers 30-32 are among the few in the bay that sit next to deep water and that they should be preserved for usage by ships.

"Although I'm not opposed to an arena, why put it there?" he said. "It's just like another nail in the coffin of maritime San Francisco, whatever's left of it."

Jennifer Matz, the head of the city's Office of Economic and Workforce Development, thinks neighborhood groups and other initial opponents will come around because of the team's promise to build a beautiful, unique arena. "It has the potential to be as iconic and memorable as Coit Tower or the Transamerica Pyramid," she said.

But not everybody's so sure. Fred Blackwell, Oakland's assistant city administrator, knows San Francisco's intense politics around development as the previous head of its redevelopment agency.

"San Francisco has given the Warriors a waterfront offer that they could not refuse," Blackwell said Tuesday. "And in the end, we will leave a space for the Warriors after they are exhausted from the (California Environmental Quality Act) litigation and cost increases required to be on the San Francisco waterfront."

Piers 30-32: Where development plans falter

Built as separate piers in 1912, Pier 30 and Pier 32 were both extended in 1926 and then linked together in 1950 to form a single pad called Piers 30-32. Since then, multiple plans to develop the 13-acre site have foundered.

1993:Scandinavia Center Inc.'s plan for a cruise terminal, exhibition hall and other uses failed because of a lack of financing.

2006: The Bryant Street Pier Project, to include a cruise terminal, state-of-the-art retail, residential development and a public park, fell apart after the cost of retrofitting the pier proved prohibitive. The $360 million project was a joint venture of Lend Lease Development US Inc., the Port of Singapore, Chinese Maritime Transport Inc. and Whitney Cressman LLC. Former 49ers owner Eddie DeBartolo then tried revising the project, but the Port of San Francisco rejected his plan.

2008: Shorenstein Properties LLC considers an office development at Piers 30-32 to pay for building a cruise ship terminal at Pier 27. That plan also fell through.

2012: Oracle billionaire CEO Larry Ellison's America's Cup Event Authority pulls out of a $111 million deal for waterfront upgrades in exchange for long-term leases. Piers 30-32 were the centerpiece of the deal. The dramatically scaled back plan now has the port paying about $8 million to partially fix up Piers 30-32 for use as some racing team bases for the 2013 regatta.